Editing Dark Souls (section)

===Elden Ring===
So instead of writing the sequel to ''Winds of Winter'', [[A Song of Ice and Fire|George R.R. Martin]] wrote the backstory and did the worldbuilding for From Software's next evolution of the Soulsborne formula, '''Elden Ring.''' There are quite a few elements that observant fans of both Miyazaki and GRRM will pick out as being distinctly his influence, but suffice to say that Elden Ring opens with more political conflict and motivation than previous Souls games. In a divine kingdom overseen by the towering, glowing, fate-twisting Erdtree, the metaphysical Elden Ring is shattered and a plot to murder the demigods devolves into a massive civil war among the remaining scions of the royal family. The fates of all within the Lands Between are set adrift, and in the midst of chaos the lone fragments of grace that remain call to The Tarnished, the descendants of a tribe driven from the kingdom for losing the grace of the Elden Ring long ago. You, the player, are one of those Tarnished. Travel the Lands Between, recover the shards of the Elden Ring, and restore the kingdom as the Elden Lord.

With Elden Ring, From decided to take everything they refined through Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro and combine it with the open world format. The result is a game that is much, much more freeform than any prior title while still retaining the distinct style of combat and exploration that Soulsborne are known for. '''But now you can JUMP.''' You also ride a horse; the horse can double-jump.  

With game director Hidetaka Miyazaki <s>rumored to be</s> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvgk3JJrpIg confirmed to be] working on a new Armored Core game, Elden Ring represents the culmination of his dark fantasy work. As such, there are tons of callbacks, references, and cameos from other games on this page, including everyone's favorite back-kicking bastard.
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This is a real doozy of a plot...
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Imagine Ragnarok happening and the world not ending in fire and ice. That's where Elden Ring starts. 

The war between the demigods results in a long-lasting stalemate between the survivors and those seeking to slay them, the Tarnished from beyond the fog. Having returned to the Lands Between over a long, long period of time, many Tarnished have subsequently lost the guidance of grace which first called them, and have either gone mad like most of the remaining natives or sworn themselves to other powers. As a newly-awakened Tarnished, you can still see the glittering golden light of grace leaping through the air and guiding you to sites of grace and towards the powerful lords who claim shards of the Elden Ring.

Except, the guidance of grace may not be the benevolence it seems. Supposedly, grace is the guidance of the Greater Will, the omnipresent power which guides the course of all things in the Lands Between. With the shattering of the Elden Ring the Greater Will has turned back to the Tarnished to restore the Golden Order, the rules and concepts which govern the Lands Between as both a political system and as laws of nature. As might be imagined, not everyone was happy living under the Golden Order. Let alone slave races like the misbegotten and demi-humans, rival powers that once challenged the Golden Order and were subjugated by the Elden Lords or which had their own designs on fate chafed beneath its rule. These resentments coalesced into the Night of Black Knives, when Death was stolen from its gaoler and wielded against the demigods, slaying so many that Queen Marika the Eternal, their progenitor and goddess, could not protect them. Or would not; for Queen Marika herself took the opportunity to shatter the Elden Ring and free the lands from the inescapable guidance of the Greater Will.

For this the Greater Will punished her with imprisonment within the Erdtree, where all souls are sealed after "death." Her children were set against each other and abandoned, and the Greater Will now calls on the Tarnished it discarded to slay them all, recover the shards of the Elden Ring, and restore the Golden Order. Almost none of the demigods know this; those who did were either betrayed by their fate, turned against the Greater Will in favor of more ancient powers, or seek vainly for forgiveness. 

As of now, there are at least 6 known endings to Elden Ring:
*Restore the Golden Order status quo.
*Restore the Golden Order but accept death as natural and end immortality for all. Instead, grant them undeath.
*Perfect the Golden Order by purging the influence of fallible demigods.
*Defile the Golden Order by cursing all life with the Dung Eater's pox. When everyone is cursed... no one will be.
*Replace the Golden Order with the guidance of <s>the stars, accepting the influence of cosmic entities of great power and inhuman knowledge.</s> the moon, shutting out the influence of all alien and eldritch Outer Gods and freeing humanity to find its own path and determine its own fate without the intervention of higher powers. Or so people claim based on the translated Japanese ending text. Which would make a lot more sense as this is thematically similar to the Lord of the Dark endings in prior Souls games.
**This ending is the most popular (due to the character that helps achieve this ending, Ranni, being the fandom's Waifu), and the least straightforward from a lore perspective. Especially because the English version, as mentioned above, does change words and word order, making some lines of dialogue confusion or potentially misleading.
*Reject the Golden Order and embrace the flames of chaos which once threatened the Erdtree itself. Kill everything. Burn it all to the ground in a frenzied firestorm, leaving only a land of fog, towering archtrees, and immortal stone dragons...wait a minute.
**This naturally has led people to believe that this ending is the starting point of the events of the Dark Souls trilogy, though this hasn't been confirmed and remains fan speculation at best.

There are a few nuances to everything said here, including the endings. The most important detail of the lore, especially now, is that we don’t know ANYTHING. Like all FromSoft games, details are rarely told to you directly, but in the open world format of Elden Ring where massive portions of the map can be locked off because you didn’t visit a hidden village 40 hours ago, there are gaps in everyones knowledge. If you’re really into lore stuff, visit the dedicated game wiki over at Fextralife, watch some videos, etc. Translations of singular words from Japanese in the script can affect the way entire scenes are interpreted. Find some experts, accept no substitutes.
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